Homeless during the Civil War

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It went on for years: work, music, school. I was busy all day long. That is how I spent my youth. All that period, from 1941 to 1945, I lived in Kolonaki1, whilst the other three lived in Kaisariani.

I remember that on October 12th [1944], which was a very important day, as well as being my birthday, we poured out onto the streets with Mrs Zannou, Lia, Vali and Alexis Stefanou. I have a photograph from that very day on Panepistimiou street2. We left the house, closing the door behind us and went out. Athens was full of people. The last German vehicles and tanks were leaving through Panepistimiou street. I remember it very clearly.

As I said, I lived in Kolonaki. My father had died in 1941;my sister died within six months of contracting tuberculosis in 1944, at the age of twenty and my mother was living alone in Kaisariani. In 1944 our shack burned down. The fire started during the Dekemvriana3.

I remember that Sunday in December 1944 when the big demonstration took place4. I visited my mother that Sunday afternnon. She was to come to Mrs Zannou's to do the laundry the next day, which was Monday. Mrs Zannou told me,

- 'Go and get your mother and bring her to spend the night here'.

So I went and fetched her home, just as she was, with nothing except a small bag with some clothes. The riots started and she stayed with us. After a few days, on St Nikolaos's day she told me,

- 'I will go to my home to see what is going on'.

She set off and was walking up Formionos street, and just as she turned a corner, she heard a large explosion just behind her. It is lucky that she turned that corner, because a mortar had exploded just behind her. She finally got to the neighbourhood, but it was desolate. There was no one around. They had all gone into the church. There was a dead person under our window. She became frightened and panicked. She entered our shack and found it riddled with holes. The only shelf we had in our house was on the ground with everything that had been on it. What should she take with her? She took a small bowl of rough salt. She returned completely frightened, with the small bowl of rough salt in her hands.

[I:NEW]

On Christmas Eve I saw smoke from the balcony. I had calculated where the Syngrou hospital stood, and where the church was with the shacks next to it. When I saw the flames and the smoke I thought, 'those are our shacks'. I called Mrs Zannou, so as not to tell my mother, and told her,

- 'Look, my neighbourhood is burning'.

Next day it was Christmas and a rumour spread that Kaisariani had been liberated. I told my mother,

- 'Lets go and see how our home is doing', whilst I knew all along that it did not exist any more.

So we set off. I was telling myself that maybe I was wrong and it had not burned down. But I was right, it was my neighbourhood. I remember the sight just as we turned a small street which still exists today, near to the 'built' houses a bit above our area. There was a hole in a wall, probably from a mortar. And there was a National Guard truck full of corpses. At that very moment they were bringing out a dead man, obviously a guerrilla, an ELAS member, although he wore no uniform. His hair was caked with blood and his hand was stripped to the bone. They threw him on the truck with the other corpses. That person was the first thing we saw. I was in shock. We headed down and there was nothing. Just ashes. And the women of our neighbourhood were all crying as they were searching in the ashes. People were trying to recognize where their shack had stood. Where our shack had been, or yours, or the other persons...

So my mother and I were left without even a tile to shelter us. Until then we had had the shack, but from then on we didn't even have that, and we were forced to move from one house to another. In 1947, again with the assistance of Mrs Zannou, I managed to get a plot of land in Nea Smyrni from the Ministry of Social Providence. Which is were I live now. So after the ministry gave us the plot, slowly slowly we managed with my mother to build a small room and a kitchen.

1Kolonaki: Wealthy neighbourhood of central Athens.2Panepistimiou street: main street in central Athens.3Dekemvriana: The armed confrontation between British forces and their local allies on the one hand, and members of the left wing guerrilla groups of EAM/ELAS on the other, that took place in Athens from early December 1944 to mid January 1945.4The large demonstration called by EAM on December 3rd 1944, which marked the beginning of the Dekemvriana.